


Making Memories

by Severina



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tv-universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3313409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I want to go home, Daryl," she says. "Will you go with me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Post-"Alone". Beth was never kidnapped la la la. Fic 05 of 05 written for tv_universe's otherwordly challenge on LJ, for the prompt "meliorism" (the belief that the world gets better)
> 
> * * *

He finds her sitting on a tree stump fifty yards from the camp, practically buried beneath the branches of several bushes grown large and wild. Daryl stands a few feet away, worries a hangnail between his teeth. Stew's already boiling, but seeing her sitting there like that with her head hanging low he's starting to think he may as well just let her be. Ain't like skunk tastes much different whether you eat it hot or cold. 

"I can hear you, you know," Beth says. "Can hear your brain going tick tick tick."

He'd been half turning away when she spoke, now stomps forward out of the shadow of the elm to cross to within a few feet of the stump. "Come to fetch ya for dinner," he says.

"Not hungry."

"You gotta eat," he says before he can stop himself, before he remembers that he promised himself he wouldn't hound her. 

Beth looks up then, tilts her head. "You don't gotta worry about me, Daryl."

"I'm not," he lies. "Know you can take care of yourself."

She nods like she believes him, and maybe she does. Then she pats the stump beside her, even though there ain't barely enough room on the stump for her alone. The ground cover's thick, enough bramble and dead branches to announce a walker coming minutes before it'd reach them, but he still hesitates a second before pushing through the brush to squish in beside her. It still feels like there's a target on his back, and he shifts uncomfortably on the tiny portion of the stump his ass isn't hanging off of. 

"Cozy," he says dryly.

She shakes her head. "Safe," she says.

He stiffens a little, leans down to pick up a stick and poke at the damp earth. Safety. His responsibility, except he failed her. First by making assumptions, opening the damn door without looking because he thought it was just the stupid dog, fucking stupid dog that would make her smile. And then by almost not getting to the road fast enough. He can still hear the sound that fist made hitting her cheek, see her head snap back and her stumble into the car a moment before his knife sunk deep into the fucker's skull. Ten more seconds and he could have prevented that. Sixty and he could have been there before the car ran her off the road. 

Now she's hiding herself away to find safety of her own. Not eating much. Not sleeping much neither. Daryl slams the pointed end of the stick into the ground and curses that fucking dog and that fucking car and those fucking men whose bodies now lie strewn across the road and wishes he could go back and kill them slower for daring to touch her. 

He stops when Beth's fingers close over his, takes a breath and stares at the roil of mud at his feet.

"I been thinkin'," Beth says after a moment. "I think we should go back."

The second breath he takes is sharper, and in it he thinks he can smell the stench of the walkers crowding around the gurney and the sharp copper tang of blood. He stares again at the churned ground and forces the phantom aromas away. "Don't think that's a good idea," he says cautiously. "Walkers woulda destroyed the whole place by now."

Beth cocks her head, squeezes his hand once before folding her own onto her lap. "Not the funeral home," she clarifies. "The farm."

He blinks, looks up to meet her eyes. "The farm?"

"It's been two years, you know?" she says wistfully. "That herd's probably in Kentucky by now. I know it won't be the same, but… I want to see the fields and the duck pond. Get a picture of my Dad and Maggie and Shawn to carry with me. Sleep in my own bed." 

She nods once, firmly, and when she stands Daryl rises in her wake. She pushes her way out of the cocoon of bushes and starts picking her way back toward the camp, stopping only to look over her shoulder when she reaches the makeshift string of cans and barbed wire. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and for a moment to Daryl she looks impossibly young, impossibly fragile, when he knows that she is neither. She ducks her head and then remembers herself, raises her chin and meets his eyes. "I want to go home, Daryl," she says. "Will you go with me?"

As if he wouldn't follow her anywhere.

* * *

It takes them three days to find a map and figure out where in the hell they are, and another two weeks to navigate the back roads and avoid the small swarms of rotters. But when they pull up into the long Greene driveway there isn't a single walker in sight. Daryl might call it blind luck. He has a feeling Beth would label it fate.

He swerves around the piles of decaying corpses and avoids looking at the dark smudge of land where the barn and a crotchety RV once stood. For her part, Beth has eyes only for the big farmhouse. For a moment he worries that when they pull up out front she'll dart from the car, dash inside like nothing's changed, but of course she's smarter than that. They sit and let the car idle and listen, and at first there is nothing, just endless silence. Then the birds start up their song again, having decided that the rumble of the engine isn't a threat. They wait another two minutes before stepping out into the heat.

The click of the car doors shutting is loud in the silence. Their feet stir up dust from the ground; every creak from the worn down steps seems to announce their presence for miles. The muscles in Daryl's arms tense as he nudges the half-open front door with the leading end of his crossbow, holds his breath as he waits. The strain across his shoulders and down his spine don't make sense until he realizes how much he needs this place to be clean; needs Beth to be able to stay awhile, catch her breath, have some peace. 

Nothing moves, nothing breathes, and after a moment he nods to Beth to follow him inside.

They shut the door behind them and make a quick search of the downstairs. Beth presses her lips together at the destruction but when they find a lone walker stumbling around in the kitchen, caught between a wall and an overturned table, it is Beth that strides forward and ends it. 

"Take it outside," she says softly, breaking the long silence. She meets his eyes, swallows to keep her voice from cracking. "Please."

* * *

Daryl spends the afternoon sitting on the porch steps. He has three new bolts to show for it when the sun starts to dip below the horizon, and he finally gets up to stretch his legs.

He wanders through the dining room and the kitchen, stops for a moment in Hershel's room and bows his head for the old badass. Then he heads upstairs, finds Beth sitting on the bed in her old room. He hesitates in the doorway, taking in the flowered wallpaper, the stuffed animals lined up on the shelf and covered with dust. A little girl's room, and if he squints he can almost see Beth as she was when he met her superimposed over the grown woman sitting so quietly on the pink patterned bedspread.

"My mother used to sit and read me bedtime stories," Beth says quietly, looking up at him. "Fairy tales, mostly. That was right after her and my dad got married. Maggie used to stand in the doorway right where you are and mock her, saying that the princesses ought to save themselves instead of relying on stupid princes."

"She was right."

"Yeah, but—" Beth lifts a shoulder. "I think everybody needs to believe in happy endings. How we get them is up to interpretation, I guess. But everybody needs 'em."

Daryl shifts against the worn doorframe, tucks his hands beneath his arms. He doesn't want to burst her bubble or nothing, but-- "Seems like every damn time we get close, somethin' comes along and fucks it up."

"That don't matter," Beth says, shaking her head. He watches the long curl of her braid bounce on her shoulder, chews on his cheek to stop himself from contradicting her again. "It's the working toward it that's the important part. Everyone needs hope, Daryl. You can bet that I'm not the only person sitting right now tryin' to figure out how to make things better, how to have a good life."

Daryl doesn't know how to tell her that the life he's got is already better than any he could have imagined in the past without sounding like a total crackpot. So he just shrugs instead.

"Thing is," Beth continues, "we can't dwell on the past. Not what I had here on the farm or what you had growing up. Not what happened at the prison or the funeral home. Not the good things or the bad, 'cause if we think about the good memories too much we'll just pine away for 'em, and if we think about the bad ones we'll get lost. For every person like the Governor or those men in the car with the cross on it, there's someone like me, Daryl. I have to believe it."

Daryl could count the number of people like Beth he's met on one hand and still have five fingers left over. Ain't a single person like her. But there was Ty and Sasha; Bob when he wasn't drooling over a liquor bottle. There was Karen, pulling double shifts on the fence to keep them safe. 

Everybody ain't all bad. It just seems like it when the shit hits the fan. "So what do you want to do?"

"Keep going. Fine a new place, a safe place. Find the good people," Beth says. She untucks her legs and rises from her perch on the bed, walks toward him and snakes his hand out from beneath his arm. Her palm is soft against his, her pale skin nearly translucent against the grime of his skin. He shifts again uncomfortably and nearly pulls his hand away, but her fingers close around his and her eyes shine with confidence. "Make new memories," she says softly.

He's pretty sure the air has all been sucked from the room, and he jerks forward on shaking legs when she tugs at him. She smiles at him then, soft and beautiful in the fading daylight, and walks backward toward the bed, towing him in her wake. She lets him go when the back of her knees hits the edge of the bed, ducks her head and bites her lip and watches him.

He swallows dryly, raises a shaking hand to her hair. 

"Oh," he murmurs.


End file.
